(Updated 4:14 p.m.) Helicopters and federal agents swept through New Haven neighborhoods Thursday, as dozens of accused “Tre Bloods” drug dealers landed into court.
The operation, led by the Drug Enforcement Administration and called “Operation Bloodline,” capped a year-long investigation into alleged cocaine, crack, and heroin dealing by gang members centered in the Dwight Kensington area.
Raids started at 6 a.m. The DEA employed SWAT teams and helicopters as part of a huge operation by New Haven standards.
The feds obtained 61 grand jury indictments in all. (An earlier announcement had put the number at 63.) Waves of suspects appeared before three different judges at U.S. District Court on Church Street throughout the day. At least one defense attorney in court said it was largest single sweep he’d seen in years.
Officials said the latest case developed after the arrest last year of the group’s alleged ringleader, known as “Nature” and “Nate.” But the roots of the investigation go back to the federal-state-city takedown of Grape Street Crips leaders in 2009; which led to a subsequent takedown of the Newhallville-based R2 gang; and now to the Tre. A host of federal and local police agencies, including New Haven’s department, worked with the DEA on the investigation.
Of the 61 people indicted, 14 were already in custody on other charges. Agents arrested 32 others as of mid-afternoon. They were looking for the last 15.
Most of those arrested were indicted on charges of taking part in a conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine. They face minimum sentences of 10 years in jail, up to life; and up to $10 million in fines. Some face heroin and powder cocaine charges as well as possession with intent to sell narcotics and possession of illegal firearms.
Most of the suspects who appeared in court in the morning session pleaded not guilty. Family members, all African-American or Latino, cried as they watched the pleas; some said that they had no idea what was going.
The father of one suspect stood by him.
“The federal government needs to do better things with its time and money than this,” he said. “Conspiracy. That’s what the feds do. They try to get you to tell [on others]. If you don’t know anything, you go to prison for nothing. My son was in truck driver school. He wasn’t a drug dealer.”
“If conspiracy is the best they have, then the feds have nothing,” the father claimed. “This is becoming a Big Brother state.”
“In order to prove it, they have to prove the person did something active” to join the conspiracy rather than just knowing someone involved in the trade, added Donald G. Cretella Jr., the family’s lawyer. He also explained that buying drugs from a member of a conspiracy is not enough to be considered part of that conspiracy.
Court officials arranged a precise choreography for the court appearances. Five suspects were brought into court a time. Prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s office requested either three or ten-day detentions for the suspects until a fuller hearing with presentation of evidence. At least two suspects were released pending a future appearance.
Magistrate William I. Garfinkel presided over the appearances in Courtroom 1 on the courthouse’s first floor; Magistrate Donna F. Martinez in Courtroom 3 on the second floor; and Magistrate Joan G. Margolis in Courtroom 4 on the third floor.
By 1 p.m., friends and relatives brought news from the courtroom to Elm and Kensington Streets, a Tre hangout where a masked gunman killed 20-year-old Tyrell Trimble on Tuesday. (Click here and here to read about that.) Young men and women exclaimed in surprise and shook their heads as names of arrested friends filtered in. “You know what it was that fucked them up?” reported one man who had just left court. “The phone tap.”
That’s what Assistant U.S. Attorney S. Dave Vatti said in Courtroom 1.
During the investigation of the ringleader arrested last year, agents made extensive use of wiretaps, Datti told Magistrate Garfinkel.
This could end up being the largest federal wiretap drug case in city history. Wiretaps led to more than 75 indictments in the case against the R2 gang last year. While the Tre Bloods case stands at 61 indictments so far, the eventual number may rise over 100 before the case ends.
One suspect was released to his father in court Thursday. The father complained to a reporter that the media focuses on “bad stories” about people. While one of his children was pleading, another of his children, who is 14, is doing well in a private school, headed for college. “Nobody wants to do good stories. Only about bad stuff that colored kids do,” he said.
At the outset of Operation Bloodline, the DEA “determined that the Dwight/Chapel neighborhood, known as “the Tre,” was one of the
sections of the city with the highest number of violent crimes,” according to a press release issued by the U.S. Attorney’s Office. “Investigators also developed information that there was a large presence of Bloods street gang members in that neighborhood, and much of the violence
there stemmed from gang-related drug trafficking.”